Why We Invested in Valerie Health

When we first met Pete Shalek and Nitin Joshi, it was immediately clear that they were not setting out to build another point solution. They were starting from first principles and asking what it would take to rebuild the operational backbone of independent healthcare practices. That ambition immediately resonated with us. Independent practices are the foundation of American healthcare, yet they are increasingly burdened by the administrative complexity that has reached crisis levels.

Across the U.S., providers now spend more than one trillion dollars each year on administrative costs. That is close to one quarter of total healthcare spending. Much of this cost is a direct result of outdated workflows, manual processes, and fragmented software that was never designed to communicate with each other. The administrative load is no longer just an efficiency problem, but rather a structural force that drives burnout, reduces access, and erodes the viability of independent practice ownership.

The AI Front Office for Healthcare

Valerie Health is building a full-stack, AI-native front office for independent practices. Their approach is simple to describe, yet incredibly difficult to execute. The company becomes an extension of the practice and takes responsibility for the innumerable workflows that make a practice run. Think: intake, referral management, scheduling, messages, paperwork, and countless small but essential tasks that collectively consume the majority of staff time.

Valerie’s agents handle this work end to end. They integrate with existing systems inside the practice, coordinate across channels, and manage workflows that currently require a human to shepherd across multiple tools. By doing so, Valerie delivers something the industry has long promised but never achieved. It creates immediate, measurable lift for practices without the friction of a lengthy implementation of major workflow change.

Their flagship products focus on intake, referrals, and scheduling for specialty care. These processes are among the largest administrative pain points for both staff and patients. Valerie’s ability to streamline them is already unlocking meaningfully better patient experiences and dramatically lighter workloads for front office teams. As the platform expands into more specialties, the implications become even more profound. A modern operating layer for independent practices does more than just save time. It enables smoother care coordination, greater patient access, and a more sustainable economic model for the physicians who anchor our healthcare system.

Why This Team

Pete and Nitin bring a very unique combination of healthcare depth, technical excellence, and operational rigor that is rarely found in one founding team. Pete previously founded Joyable, a mental health startup, sold it, and then served as Chief Product Officer roles at AbleTo and Stellar Health, one of Primary’s portfolio companies. His understanding of provider workflows runs deep and is grounded in years of building software that directly impacts care delivery. When he left Stellar, we immediately told him we wanted in on whatever came next.

Nitin co-founded Uber Health, scaling it from zero to more than $100 million in ARR. He is both a technical founder and a systems thinker who knows how to build products that work at scale in highly regulated environments. Before Uber Health, he spent time as an engineering manager at Stripe where he honed his craft in building resilient, high throughput systems.

Together, they combine product intuition, healthcare expertise, and engineering leadership. It’s hard to imagine a better pairing for a company that must deeply understand provider operations while also building a highly sophisticated automation engine.

Why Now

Running an independent practice has never been more challenging. Reimbursements are tightening, wages are rising, competition from scaled platforms is increasing, and administrative requirements continue to grow. Yet, AI has reached a point where it can reliably handle structured and unstructured workflows at production quality.

This creates a rare moment where technology can change the trajectory of an entire class of providers. Valerie is not retrofitting AI into an older product. They are building an AI-native company that is purpose-built for the workflows that define practice operations. Valerie sits squarely in one of the strongest tailwinds in healthcare. Providers need operational leverage and cannot hire their way out of the problem. AI can finally deliver that leverage.

After co-leading Valerie’s Seed with General Catalyst, we are so excited to now double down in Valerie’s Series A and welcome Redpoint to the team.

We believe Valerie has the team, technology, and timing to define this category and we're thrilled to be their partners.